we shouldn't condemn it until we know whether it actually happens or not

but being on campus at the tail end of freshers week I can say that every themed night seems to be an excuse to make girls dress as scantily as possibly while bros ape around letching after them.
I'm sure when i was a frsher the focus was on being as drunk as possible. Maybe being sexist is the unis way of not encouraging irresponsible drinking

I didn't click on the link at first as I thought I'd already read it but clicking now, I remember I was thinking of a different article, which was trying to make 'slut dropping' out to be a bit thing. This one isn't so sensationalist.

honestly can't imagine i'll ever be able to leave the house without fearing assault of some sort. not just nights out, but day-to-day.

of course it happens at night.

i can't go to a club without being groped at least once (don't tell me it's what i'm wearing, i'm mainly wearing jeans and a tshirt when this happens. don't tell me it's where i go, this happens at indie clubs, gaybars, the lot). i've spoke to my friends about this. the female ones say they shrug it off or are FLATTERED and the male ones say theres nothing they can do really but advise the people they're with that everyone avoids the perpertrators.

and rock clubs like Krash. Being on 'man-watch' is depressing, it feels like you're having to act like some ridiculous territorial chimp keeping gropey interlopes away from your females, when all you want to do is be able to hang out with your friends (of both sexes) and not have to worry about anyone getting upset.

Krash is still terrible. seems to exclusively be kids under 20 and guys that are pushing 30 leering at said girls. I was there for my friend's 24th over the summer and they played my generation by Limp Bizkit twice in a row, though.

because it was so gropey. I usually tell them to fuck off but that only makes them laugh or think i'm 'fiesty' ER NO. I just don't want to you touching me AT ALL.
I had to get the bouncers to throw one guy out because I wasn't responding well to his 'moves' and he didn't like it so got shitty with me. I can hold my own in those situations but fuck knows what I'd do if it was anything more than just a touch. Part of me thinks I'd be okay but I reckon I'd just freeze and wouldn't know what to do.

You answer back or tell them to fuck off and they take it in a real school boy manner as flirting. Which does worry me.

Urgh. Fucking disgusting.

Same. I prefer to go out in a smallish place where i know a fair amount of people...men and women. That way you can feel safe and secure and actually have a good night rather than worrying about someone touching your fanny.

i'm pretty sure shit like that was pretty rare when i was a bit younger - especially in indie clubs etc - i don't remember it every happening to any of my friends.
this stuff should get better in time, not worse. Are we going backwards?

especially at uni we were a pretty tight group, if it was happening I would have heard. We are going back a decade here, I haven't been to a club for god knows how long so there might well have been a cultural shift in that time.

i'm not going to get into a thing over whether or not something happened in situations ten or so years ago, when i was there and you weren't, among my group of friends who i know and you don't during a time when i was going out to clubs and you weren't.
that sounds really arsey, I'm not meaning to be as the stuff that your talking about sounds horrific, but you can't really just dismiss someone's experiences by referencing your own totally different experiences

the Independent writers relates an anecdote that sounds highly dubious. "Slut-dropping" is a dance move - but someone has attached it to this made-up practice that's almost certainly as apocryphal as donkey-punching.

Without being stereotypical or judgmental, girls here agree that it is 75-80% guys of maghrebian origin who hassle them in the street. It's not always dirty, sometimes stuff like Hello, you're beautiful or whatever. But still creepy.

Lots of sociologists believe it's linked to masculine culture - lots of unemployed in Paris and when they lose their jobs (traditionally arab men are breadwinners) they lose their sense of dominance over women, so they resort to this kind of behaviour or something. I'll find the papers and post them up here if I can, my girlfriend is studying this...

but unfortunately I doubt cases like that are unique to France. What shocked me was how brazen guys can be in the middle of Paris. In broad daylight. In front of other people. I dunno. It was a bit of a wake up call for me.

this seems to be one area where maybe things were better in the old days. We were politically aware (if not always active), PC, and we still managed to have a lot of sex. Not that there wasn't a lot of horrible stuff as well. I guess uni-life is just reflecting the changes seen everywhere over the last 15 years.

Frankly, I just think by women buying into lad culture and mistaking individualism for empowerment, they've let guys think they can get away with acting liking morons again. Maybe if they thought they had to at least act sensitive to get any, then things might change.

Yes I know this argument does that horrible 'blame the victim' thing, whilst painting men as animals. Sorry about that. Just seems pragmatic. Feel free to make a counter-argument as I'm not comfortable with mine.

My brother is a good deal younger than me (13 years) and seeing what he gets up to at university is a bit depressing. None of this 'Slut Dropping' stuff, but the photos of his nights out on Facebook seem indistinguishable from generic crap town nightclubs. That was exactly the kind of thing I went to university to avoid. Typical uni night nowadays seems to be — hit the Jagerbombs at home, order Dominos, play XBox, then go and see a big name DJ at a club that has a foam party and take Instgrams of girls dressed like sluts. What happened to doing acid and pissing about in a park?

ALSO. Who even *had* a car at university?? Maybe 3 people in the whole halls of residence who'd always get pestered for lifts to Safeway.

It is victim blaming, aye. You don't realise how bloody hard it is, in the face of these things to sort of 'take a stand' - it's absolutely draining being a young woman around LADDY LAD LADS always having to be the person saying 'um no...'.

I mean, there's been times that I've let things which I know are fucking awful slip or whatever because I know that the social/personal consequences aren't worth it and because it's bloody exhausting fighting against this sort of horrible culture when you're surrounded by it constantly.

Also I'd say that a lot of the time women who are indulging in laddy bants are doing it because they feel socially pressured into it or because they know full well that you do gain a certain status if you're the 'cool girl' who joins in so why rock the boat when it mightn't achieve anything?

certainly in the places my peer group went to, the LADDY LAD LADS just didn't exist. They were around sure, just not in the same pubs or clubs, it was just relatively easy to avoid I think.
I'm interested in hearing a late 20s / early 30s female disser's take on this as I'm aware that we are only hearing "all different in my my day'' claims from the chaps.

it's more or less impossible to win in the continual balancing act - even around the kind of men who purport to 'get it' and suggest you should just stop playing along with the LADS - between 'letting them get away with it' and 'being a humourless oversensitive bitch'. in this very thread, a woman saying that she once felt scared in a taxi going the wrong way has essentially been scoffed at for being oversensitive and irrational, and by someone who i guess would not identify as a LADDY LAD or condone the kind of behaviour in the article above. so, on the one hand: 'women, just speak up and don't let THOSE MISOGYNISTS get away with it!' but, on the other: 'don't speak up TOO much, because that's just ridiculous'

the saddest thing that's happened to me recently was someone who was kinda loosely in my friendship group made a rape joke on facebook and i responded with 'rape isn't funny and neither are you' because i am very witty.

now 'rape isn't funny and neither are you' has become this really funny 'injoke' for a certain few of my friends, when other friends make rape jokes. which would be cool, if this STOPPED THEM FROM MAKING RAPE JOKES. but it hasn't. and whenever i'm like 'guys... i was being serious' it's like 'oh look, hannah is being FUNNY again'.

he took the long way because he wanted petrol. he thought i was drunk so took advantage of the fact that i'd be too pissed to realise where i was going and how expensive the ride was. i was close to sober (i'd only had one drink). complained.

Statistically, we're abnormally safe. We're generally not at risk of threat or attack, even when we don't feel it.

I'd suggest the issue with sexually-motivated attacks and rape is not that it's an ever-present threat- it's that, unlike some other threats, it's virtually impossible to accurately detect or anticipate. If you can't be sure when to put your guard up, you simply never let it down.

It's pretty frustrating, almost like someone hiding behind your back & tapping your shoulder, then running round when you turn around again. Waiting for someone to try it on when I'm around so I can threaten to "Absolutely Gas Them".

I feel like a lot of really awful misogynistic tendencies have been exaggerated by a combination of the vague, commercially-driven aspiration culture of today and the ego-inflation of Web 2.0 stuff...like, people have an idiotic sense of pride in being hedonistic, priapic morons. I know this kind of behaviour is old as time, it's just that it's jumped the shark.

In fact I blame rugby wankers for 99% of this kind of behaviour. They all went to all-boys school and uni is the first time they've been so close to girls so they just expect them to want to have sex with them because of their neckless muscular physiques and the fact they're minted.

I generally hate rubbish jokes that depend entirely on some ill-conveyed sense of irony to be not complete reactionary bollocks; but I think any subject can - and in some cases should be - joked about in a way that isn't completely insensitive or trivialising.